Huffington Post Blogger Guidelines Now Not Anti-Conspiracy Theory?

I woke up this morning to read an e-mail from Maureen Gummert’s mailing list, one in which the author was exceedingly glad that The Huffington Post was publishing an editorial by Sander Hicks about the Vatican child sexual abuse scandal.

Sander Hicks has created a story about the Vatican sex scandal and has done a brilliant job at linking it to the Franklin Credit Union scandal. The story posted yesterday 4/6/2010 at The Huffington Post….this is a huge breakthrough.

Huffington Post is exactly the mainstream media exposure we have hoped for. Nick Bryant has worked tirelessly to assure the world finds out about what happened to so many victims.

Please take some time to read Sander’s story and please consider writing a comment. We need to do everything we can to keep this story in the forefront on The Huffington Post.

To vigilant readers of this website, the Franklin Trust sexual abuse scandal is hardly news. The story of a group of wealthy Omaha, Nebraska businessmen operating a speedball-soaked sex ring created such a stir that The Washington Times of all publications eventually would run a sensational headline inquiring if the Reagan White House was exploiting call boys.

When I interviewed John DeCamp, an attorney for one of the victims, a year ago, he seemed excited about the release of former New York Times reporter Nick Bryant’s work on the entire scandal. (His is a book I must admit with some shame that I haven’t read, but I’ve been meaning to make a point of it.)

In Hicks’ article, the long and the short of it is that a recent meeting with Bryant in New York reconfirmed Hicks’ beliefs that even the faithful have every reason to second-guess the Church’s much-maligned public relations efforts in response to (well substantiated) accusations of systemic acts of covering up sexual abuse.

Yet as early as a month ago, The Huffington Post pulled an article by Jesse Ventura inquiring about the possibility of explosives being used to take down World Trade Center 7 back in 2001, the paper replacing the column of the host of truTV’s “Conspiracy Theory” with a disclaimer saying that the paper’s blogger guidelines make “conspiracy theories” verboten. Fascinatingly, as Gawker astutely pointed out at the time, the publication date for Ventura’s column was the same as that of this column by Jenny McCarthy, asserting that medical authorities and the pharmaceutical industry were criminally negligent in withholding knowledge about poisonous vaccines from the sheeple. Indeed, some might argue that cultivating reticence to utilize vaccines in parents might be more harmful or irresponsible than, say, insinuating that different parties than commonly known might have been responsible for the attacks on 9/11.

This is all the more fascinating when one acknowledges how conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 have been to Hicks’ career. As the activist/publisher told Counterpunch in 2004, “Well actually, first I have to say I’m not against speculating about explosives at the WTC . . . it doesn’t mean the Federal Government was complicit, though. Whoever pulled off 9/11 could have planted them. Explosives per se don’t indict any party.” Heck, filmmaker Paul Krik event went so far as to film a Maltese Falcon and Hicks-riffing fictional detective story in Hicks’ place of business.

The day of the Ventura censoring, Huffington Post did not respond to my brief, polite request for copies of their blogger guidelines.

To whatever extent that either Hicks, Ventura or you are willing to humor the idea of our leaders either too dim or consciously clouding the reality of whose culpable for 9/11, The Huffington Post has revealed itself yet again inconsistent in its own editorial policy. It’s one thing if The Huffington Post’s editors simply wish to blanketly call these lines of inquiry “inaccurate” or “libelous,” but it is quite another to claim to prohibit conspiracy theories in total in order to single out one idea.

As investigative journalism inherently involves degrees of speculation in order to seek out a lead, it’s seems clear, to its credit, that The Huffington Post is not truly banning conspiracy theories per se.

Wait a minute – “Franklin Scandal” is a chapter of the “pedocracy” conspiracy theory, just ask David Icke.
Huffington Post won’t let me post the following comment to Hick’s “article” :

At first I wondered if this article was Hick’s way of doing penance for all the free publicity he provided to Delmart Vreeland, prior to Vreeland being “sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography by giving them drugs and money and promising them a drum set” – “Forty-two-year-old Delmart Vreeland was convicted in 2006 of 13 felony charges, including inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children and distribution of cocaine”.
But then the article turned out to be nothing more than an advertisement for Hick’s buddy Nick Bryant & Bryant’s book. This isn’t Hick’s first effort at promoting Bryant’s book, either – and Bryant has admitted soliciting Hicks and other bloggers to promote his book.
It only took about 8 comments for the Ritual Abuse Survivor/Therapist Cult lobbyists, that Bryant is a front for, to show up.

Wait a minute – “Franklin Scandal” is a chapter of the “pedocracy” conspiracy theory, just ask David Icke.Huffington Post won't let me post the following comment to Hick's “article” :

At first I wondered if this article was Hick's way of doing penance for all the free publicity he provided to Delmart Vreeland, prior to Vreeland being “sentenced to 336 years to life in prison after he was convicted of luring two boys into performing sex acts and making child pornography by giving them drugs and money and promising them a drum set” – “Forty-two-year-old Delmart Vreeland was convicted in 2006 of 13 felony charges, including inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children and distribution of cocaine”.But then the article turned out to be nothing more than an advertisement for Hick's buddy Nick Bryant & Bryant's book. This isn't Hick's first effort at promoting Bryant's book, either – and Bryant has admitted soliciting Hicks and other bloggers to promote his book. It only took about 8 comments for the Ritual Abuse Survivor/Therapist Cult lobbyists, that Bryant is a front for, to show up.